A blog for members of Westbury Baptist Church, people who want to know more about our ministry, or people who just want to chat.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Power of a Holy Life

In the
summer of my 15th year, I asked my parents if I could go visit my
uncle Tim.Tim was ten years older than
me, which meant when I was 8 years old, he was a senior in high school.To me, he was a kid, but one who got to do
cool things like drive a car, play on the football team, and hang out with
other teenagers.Even better, he paid
attention to me.In the years since
then, Tim had gone off to college, gotten married, and had gone to seminary in
Ft Worth to prepare for the ministry.So
my parents drove me to Austin, where they put me on a bus bound for Ft
Worth.It was the first big trip I had
ever taken on my own.I spent a week
there with my aunt and uncle and their friends, all of whom were seminary
students or their spouses.At the end of
that week, I made a decision.I didn’t
know any people my age who were like my uncle and his friends, but when I went
off to college, I would seek out people like that.That decision changed my life.When I got to UH, I immediately joined the
Baptist Student Ministry.There’s this
idea with a lot of Christians that if you let your kid go off to a state
college, he’ll lose his faith.That
certainly wasn’t the case for me; my faith in Christ came of age during my time
there.Best of all, I met my wife,
Carrie, there.As it turns out, that
week in Ft Worth was one of the defining moments of my young life.

What
was it about my uncle and his friends that was so influential?We didn’t have any deep conversations that I
can remember.We talked about sports, music,
movies…the same stuff most people talk about.All I can say is that those young men and women were different from any
of the young people I knew back home.They were different in a way that made me want what they had, and it
made me want to know their God better.That, to me, is holiness.Now, I
know the term “holy” is not a word we usually associate with
attractiveness.I rarely meet anyone who
says, “I sure would like to be more holy.”We associate holiness with fat, red-faced preachers who tell everyone
they’re going to Hay-ell and that God is happy about that fact, or with old
women who wear their hair in a tight bun and scowl at anyone who looks like
they might be enjoying life.But I
believe that a truly holy life is the most compelling, attractive thing you’ll
ever see.It is the best advertisement
for Jesus Christ in the world.As we
continue to talk about representing our Lord in a non-believing culture, we
have to talk about what it means to be holy.This Sunday, I want to look at the life of a man so holy, he changed two different empires.I want you to consider
whether or not you want to live such a life.